FOREWORD

It is difficult to believe that it will soon be three years since we were elected to the office in Vienna. We have approximately one more year to the General Assembly of Delegates to be held in Paris most likely on Wednesday, September 9, 1998. I hope all National Delegates have already started to make plans to come to Paris for the 11th ECEE.

The Executive Committee held its Fifth Meeting in Paris in June 19-20, 1997 upon the kind invitation of Dr.Darius Amir-Mazaheri, the President of the French Association for Earthquake Engineering. The members of the Executive Committee who took part in this meeting had the opportunity of visiting the conference hall and learn about the preparations from the first hand. We also participated to the meeting of the ECEE Organising Committee and exchanged opinions concerning different issues related to the organisation of the Paris Conference. We believe that we will have a very well organised, interesting, stimulating and joyful conference in the beautiful city of Paris next September. We hope all of you will be there to take part in this last European Conference of this century.

It was very encouraging to observe the increasing interest in the Bulletin. In this issue, we have contributions from Algeria, Iran, Romania, Russia, and United Kingdom concerning different issues related to the activities of the National Associations. I hope these contributions will increase in the future.

It was also possible to include a summary of the preliminary investigation report about a very recent earthquake (May 10,1997 Ardekul Earthquake) that took place in Iran. We would like to express our gratitude to Dr.Ahmad Naderzadeh, the Delegate of Iran in EAEE, for all his efforts in supplying us with this interesting report.

We have also reports concerning three workshops: the first one held in Istanbul, Turkey (First Japan-Turkey Workshop on Earthquake Engineering), the second one held in Bled, Slovenia (Workshop on Seismic Design Methodologies for the Next Generation of Codes) and the third one held in St.Petersburg, Russia (Workshop on Seismoisolation and Structural Control) and about 8th Int. Conf. on Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering held in Istanbul Turkey. We would like to express our thanks for these reports to those who kindly provided us with the related documents.

In this issue you will also find the First Announcement for the 19th European Regional Earthquake Engineering Seminar to be held in Cairo, Egypt. It was very heartening for our Executive Committee to receive three more preliminary applications from member associations to organise the regional seminars in the future.

This issue is also printed as 2500 copies to be distributed to all National Delegates. However, all National Organisations are encouraged to duplicate the Bulletin for increasing the distribution.

Expecting your comments and contributions.

Atilla M. Ansal